John Harrington-WHAT WE USE - Audio and sound kit

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Here's a video segment on the Audio and Sound Kit that we use. A transcription of the video is available after the jump.

Transcript:
Hi, I’m John Harrington and we’re going to break out and break down the wide variety of equipment we use to deliver images to our clients. Next we are going to show you one of the equipment kits we use when we are traveling on assignment. Each kit is different and has a very specific purpose. So lets take a look.

This is our audio kit. And when we’re gathering audio for our video or sound to go with slides, we need to make sure we have the right microphones, whether it’s a wired, handheld wireless, wireless lavaliere or whatever we need. We need to make sure that it’s in here. It’s a small pack. It’s a small Tamrac case.

So lets have a look at what’s in the audio kit. This is a cover that allows us to use the wireless microphone and attach it to our belt. Here is our M-Audio Micro Track II Recorder, what’s really nice is you can plug direct in with two quarter inch microphone jacks, you can also use the T microphone and the microphone jack to capture wild sound.

What’s really great though, is it captures to a CF card, so you don’t have to worry about dealing with actual tape. Just like photos, just like files; you put the card into the card reader and drag files straight off and into your system.

This is a windscreen, a windscreen on the microphone. When you are out and about, it’s important that you have a windscreen on; otherwise you will hear the sound of wind whipping through the microphone. This is a wireless mic. On the bottom of the wireless mic goes the Sennheiser adapter. The Sennheiser adapter allows you to make this microphone wireless as opposed to hardwired.

When we’re doing a report for someone in particular, it’s real easy to slip on what’s called a mic flag with a windscreen, wireless and report just like that. If we were doing something for another broadcast network or someone else, this mic flag is easily changeable.

Here’s two Sennheiser transmitter and receivers. We actually have another pair of them. I happen to be talking to you on one of them right now. In addition, we have straight XLR to quarter inch so that we can plug straight into the M-Audio and go straight into XLR mult box or other industry standard XLR jacks, it’s a three-plug connector.

In the front here, is a whole collection of audio patch cords. Again, the quarter inch with quarter inch adapter to the smaller plug. A backup pair of headphones. We typically like to use our Bose wireless headphones. An extra microphone. All sorts of patch cords.

Also on the outside, in case we need to have a microphone up at a podium, this is actually an adapter so that we can connect the mic to a podium and screw into a mic holder. So that’s our audio sound kit.

Below the video is a link to each of the segments, Let me know what you think!

information

The Assignment Construct is a commentary about what went into, what went on behind-the-scenes, or otherwise occured before, during, or after an assignment. Everything from images of the setup, to choices of camera angle, client requests (and fulfillment), and so on.